Pastor Logan Ramsey
https://twitter.com/LoganRamseySDG
https://newharvestministriesneo.org/
New Harvest NEO
Lead Us Not Into Temptation (Matthew6:13)
- Getting in verse nine. Here now the word of the Lord. Pray then like this, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. "Your kingdom come, your will be done. "On earth as it is in heaven. "Give us this day our daily bread, "and forgive us our debts, "as we also have forgiven our debtors. "And lead us not into temptation, "deliver us from evil." Join me in the word of prayer. Degracious heavenly Father, we praise you, we exalt your holy name. We pray that your name would be hallowed in our hearts amongst the community, amongst our nation, and amongst the nations of your God. Lord, we pray that as we meet in worship tonight that the spiritual sacrifices of praise, that we offer to you, would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. We pray that the singing was a pleasant aroma. We pray that the preaching, your name is honored, it is glorified. We pray that our hearts will send upward, as your word is expounded. We pray that by your holy spirit, you would search us to your God, by your sometimes convicting truths. We pray that we would bless you. We pray that we, our lives, our worldview, would be changed and shaped by your truth, your God. In the name of I beloved son, we pray. Amen, thank you, maybe seated. We now arrive at what is the sixth and the final petition of the Lord's prayer, give it in Matthew chapter six, which is verse 13 and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. As I always want to point out, we examine any given text in the Bible in light of its context. And notice therefore, that verse 13 begins with the conjunction and, Kai in the Greek and, you see, I point that out because what we pray for in this petition, I think is very closely related to and built off of what we pray for in the previous, which is both the forgiveness of our sins, as well as the empowerment by God's grace to forgive others. The temptation, especially with a text like the Lord's prayer and the way that we've sort of been handling these sermons treating each verse on its own given sermon. The temptation that I want to avoid is that we then sort of just take these things apart and in our minds go, okay, verse 12 is its own thing right here and then verse 13 is like this wholly different thing right here. Obviously, as you know, chapter and verse numbers were not original. It's not as though when Matthew was writing his gospel, he was sitting there going 13, 14, that's just not how it was. They were added, well, chapters in the Middle Ages and then around the time of the Reformation, the verse numbers. And so don't read too much into that. You should understand that these things are connected. You should try to get your mind to read the Bible sort of in the flow of things. They actually make Bibles that you can buy with the chapter and verse numbers taken out. And those are a very helpful tool to just read through the gospel of Matthew. Read through the book of Hebrews and not being distracted by verse numbers of things but just get into the flow of what the author is saying. I would recommend something like that to you. But at any rate, my point is that when we pray in verse 13, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. There is, I think clearly a connection between that and verse 12, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And so I would just ask you to observe that is no use to pray the former if we do not pray the latter. You know, it makes no sense to pray, oh dear God, forgive me of my sins if we don't then also pray that God would give us the grace to stay away from sin. That would be hypocrisy. In the Lord's prayer, our Lord is not just teaching us how to pray, but in being taught how to pray, we learn how to live. I've said it, but the truest reflection of who a man is is how he conducts himself in private. And I don't even just mean, you know, in private with his family. I mean, when no one else is there in the quietness of his mind and in his own heart, whoever you are in that moment, in that location and environment, that's who you are. There's no two ways about it. And our Lord places a preeminence on private prayer saying we should go to our Father in secrets. 'Cause when we are alone, God alone sees in secret. And so when we are alone with only God watching and listening, those things that we open up to him from our hearts are the most accurate picture of who we truly are. And so it necessarily follows that if we sincerely are praying, you know, if that's a true reflection of who we are, that in secret we pray that God would forgive us our sins, you know, not just for cheap fire insurance that, you know, I don't have to go to hell someday when I die, but because we've truly been taught by God's grace to hate and to a poor sin, then we will also pray for God's grace, which not only forgives us, but trains us to renounce ungodliness. The word of God says for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and unworldly passions. Think about that, the grace of God has appeared to train us, to put away ungodliness, to put away sin at worldly passions, and to live continuing to read, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works. Titus 2, 11 through 14. You see, if you make a claim to have God's grace, if you make a claim to have experienced salvation, but you're not being trained by that grace to live a self-controlled, godly, sober life, you are lying. Now did I just say that if you are not sinlessly perfect and without fault in every capacity, that you are not saved? No, that's not what I said. None of us, we are nowhere taught in scripture that we would live perfectly sinless lives even after our conversion. But you can tell, I mean, you can analyze your life and you can notice, is something being done here? Is the ball moving closer to the end zone, to use a crude analogy? Or am I just being stagnant? Am I just staying here? Do I see that God is actually leading me into conformity to the image of Christ? Now there may be times that, wow, I fell or something happened this week and I stumble, I have to pray for forgiveness and these different things. But over the trajectory of our lives, am I moving closer to where God would want me to be? Is God actually doing a work in my life? It is the same analogy, John, that you and I talk about with post-millennialism and the great Puritan hope that God is going to bring the nations unto himself. We don't compare things like, wow, it's really bad compared to 20 years ago. No, you look at the whole span of the Christian church and is God doing something with the world? Well, you can apply that same principle to our own lives. Is God doing something in my heart? Is He training me to be self-controlled? You know, if there is not a desire in your heart, a desire for good works, and according to the word of God, you've not been redeemed by Christ. Let the Spirit use us convicting truth to search our hearts and divide soul and spirit joints and marrow. You see, when we experience forgiveness, we also see how horrendous sin was. You know, I've never, in my life, honestly asked for forgiveness for something I didn't think was wrong. The only times in my life that I've ever asked other people to forgive me, which that has happened. It was because I, you know, after thinking about it and once pride starts to go away and you're not being controlled by those just knee-jerk reactions and emotions, sometimes we think, oh man, I actually am in the wrong here. I do need to ask for forgiveness. But you see, my point is that the very idea of asking for forgiveness or being forgiven presupposes that there is some wrong doing on your part. If I were to give a gift to someone, I would not ask them to forgive me. When did I do anything wrong worthy of being forgiven? I don't call up people and ask them to forgive me. Well, what'd you do? I ate dinner. No, for things that are not wrong, we don't need to ask for forgiveness. So the very idea that we would even pray, Father, forgive us our debts. Well, that would show that in our hearts, we've actually perceived, oh, I have sinned against God. And so when we experience forgiveness, we also then get a sight of how truly horrendous sin is. This is because along with forgiveness, God also grants repentance to the elect. Now I realize that there are some ministers or even seminaries that say, you should not use the word repentance in church. The writers of the New Testament did not get that memo. Repentance is a biblical word. And repentance is also something that God grants. It is a gift that God gives to us along with our salvation, our faith. Acts chapter 11 verse 18 says, then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life. The Puritan Thomas Watson in his excellent work, The Doctrine of Repentance defines repentance as a spiritual medicine made up of six special ingredients. One is sight of sin. Two sorrow for sin. Three confession of sin. Four shame for sin. Five hatred for sin. And then six turning from sin. Watson says, if anyone is left out, it loses its virtue. When we see our sin, the following emotions are sorrow, shame, and hatred. We get a picture of this in the Beatitudes when Christ says blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. That is what happens in a man's heart. When God rips away his pride and shows in the mirror and says, this is who you are. When we see our sin, we feel these emotions. We feel shame in our culture today, shame. That word is like a bad word. You're not supposed to talk about it. It has a very negative connotation. But true shame as it relates to evangelical repentance is something we should praise God for. It is good for a sinner to feel shame for their sin. For unless there is shame, hatred will not follow. And without hatred, there will never be any turning from sin. Watson says, Christ is never loved until sin be loathed. It is this righteous anger, this hatred for sin which will lead us to mortify and pray that we would not be led into temptation. Ephesians chapter four, verse 26 and 27 says, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Now I have to just stop because that is one of the most misquoted verses. I hear people misunderstanding it all the time. The idea of that verse is that we are angry at our sin and that anger ought not cease. The apostle says, do not even let the sun go down. Do not let the sun fade away on that anger. Far too many people either read or watched the Little Women series and so they think it means something totally different. But that's, no, that's what it means. We are to be angry at our sin. We are to hate it. Paul says, don't let the sun go down on that anger. And then he also says, give no opportunity to the devil. John Calvin is written, no man can be reckoned a Christian who does not acknowledge himself to be a sinner. And in the same manner we conclude from this petition that we have no strength for living a holy life except so far as we obtain it from God. You see, the idea is that we get a sight of our sin. Then we feel sorrow for that sin. We confess that sin to God. They're shame over it. There's hatred for it and there's turning from it. But in this spiritual medicine known as repentance, when God grants repentance to us because it's a gift, we then turn to him. We realize that we can't overcome these things on our own. We need his grace. And so we call out to God's grace to help us overcome that sin. We don't just ask God to forgive us our sin and so we can keep on doing it and not have to worry about punishment. We ask God to forgive us our sin and then we ask that God would help us to stay away from that sin. And so that is what leads us to pray. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Let us now consider the words of, or excuse me, the meaning of the words themselves. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says in the sixth petition, we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted. And we should note that the only way to interpret verse 13 properly is to interpret each component of the verse in light of the whole. Meaning if we break it apart and try to come up with an interpretation of a first half in a vacuum without seeing it in light of the second half and vice versa, we'll be led astray. Jesus gave us this as a whole. And so in obedience to him, we have to see each part in light of one another. Now, why is it important for me to say that? Well, because many interpreters struggle with this idea of praying not to be led into temptation because of the fact that throughout the Holy Scriptures and we will get into some of these things, we are never promised to be totally without temptation. And as a matter of fact, there is a theme in the Holy Scriptures that the Lord actually uses temptation to strengthen us. Now, here's where it gets difficult. We have to understand this very carefully. Some of you are probably thinking right now of James 1 verse 13, which plainly says, let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one. You see, at no point can it ever be said by a Christian or anyone for that matter, that God is like personally tempting anyone to sin. Now, when we look at James chapter one as a whole, we get this fascinating study into the nature of trials and temptations. I want to share some of this. The two Greek words translated as either trial or temptation in James are the word periosmos, which means trial. By the way, it's the word translated as temptation here in Matthew six and perioso for tempt or temptation. Now, when you look, you obviously don't see it in your English translation 'cause the word tempt and trial, those words don't look anything like each other. But if you know the original language, those words are very closely related. And so it's just this amazing thing. There's such this close relationship between what a temptation is and what a trial is. And as a matter, the words are actually almost interchangeable. They're almost synonymous. According to BDAG, which is a Greek lexicon, both terms could mean either tempt or trial. And the way that they are translated in English is just due to this rounding context. You say, well, what is the point of this Greek lecture, Logan? Well, my point is, is that when we see then, when we look at James chapter one, while trials and temptations are clearly distinct, right? They're not the same thing because God never tempts us, but he does try us. So they're not the same thing that there is a close relationship between the two. We are told to count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and lets steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. What we see in this text is that our trials, the difficulties that the Lord has experienced in our lives, the hardships that we go through are for the particular purpose that our faith would be steadfast or strengthened and made perfect. I've used this illustration a couple of times before, but it just so works. If you wanna grow a muscle, you put tension on that muscle, and when God wants to grow a Christian, he puts tension on that Christian. He tests their faith, and that is how we grow in the faith. It is then in the same context that James makes it very clear, God cannot ever be thought of to be morally accountable for tempting people to sin, for he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. When James says this, it is almost as if he is anticipating and preemptively responding to a potential objection to his teaching on trials. Because when James is talking about trials, and he's saying how God uses those to produce steadfastness, count on all joy when you meet trials, the idea is sort of like someone could look at what James is saying there about the goodness of trials, and then when they fall into sin, blame God and say, "Hey, it's not my fault." You know, God is the one who tempted me. He allowed me to go through that difficult situation. He allowed me to go through that trial, and it was just, I just couldn't help it. It was beyond my ability, and so it's not my fault that I sin and try to pass the blame off to God. James says that if you're doing that, if you're saying that, or you're even thinking like that in your head, if you're trying to rationalize like that, that's nonsense. You only sin when you want to sin. Now, I've laid out a lot of different stuff here, so let's put it all together. God never tempts us to sin, but he does try our faith, and those two statements are not contradictory. Remember the story of the ancient saint Job. When Satan wanted to disturb him, God had to actually give the devil permission, and in God's sovereignty and in God's providence, there are bound to be times like that in our lives where our faith is tested. Job was tested with the loss of his property, as well as the great diminishment of his health, the loss of members of his family, his own children. And though this was the work of Satan under God's permission, God is not charged with guilt. God is not charged with any wrongdoing, for Job never, ever had to sin. What God was doing in this instance was he was testing Job's faith. And even when Job's own wife told him to curse God and die, the testing of Job's faith ultimately produced a steadfastness, a strengthening. And I love Job's response to his wife. You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Anyways, I guess don't use that at home. We see that Jesus Christ himself underwent such a trial in the wilderness and Matthew chapter four, where the devil himself is tempting him to sin, not that Jesus like internally desired to commit a sin, but externally Satan was trying to get Jesus to sin. And of course our Lord remained steadfast and was rewarded with the ministering angels who came to him in that instance. And another scriptural example of this kind of thing, which where God actually uses temptation for purpose, not that he's tempting us, but that he is using it in his sovereignty, which is, I think this next one is especially close to the heart of ministers. I think, and it's seen in the life of the Apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians 12, some of you already know where I'm going, but in verses seven through 10, Paul says, so to keep me from becoming conceited, because of surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is my perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. The sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Now, much ink has been spilt with speculation as to exactly what this thorn in the flesh was. Whatever our understanding, it should be something that can be made sense of from the text itself. Paul describes the thorn as a messenger and angelos of Satan. And sometimes modern Christians are embarrassed of anything supernatural. And so you'll even hear modern Christians try to come up with a very like naturalistic understanding of this text, but it's very, very obvious. You can't debate it. Paul has something spiritual in mind here. Calvin's interpretation is that when Paul uses the phrase thorn in the flesh, it's this broad sort of idea of every kind of sinful temptation. The word flesh oftentimes is used in scripture in a way that is synonymous with our sin nature. So Calvin says he calls it further a messenger of Satan on this ground that as all temptations are sent by Satan. So whenever they assail us, they warn us that Satan is at hand. And so this is, I don't know, it speaks to my heart. I think it's an incredible text. Paul is describing his personal trial and struggle, this struggle of his where he's being harassed by a messenger of Satan. He pleads with the Lord to be rid of it. And if we favor the interpretation, this is where I lean. It doesn't mean that if you disagree with me or a heretic, but if we favor the interpretation that it is a sinful temptation, Paul is pleading with the Lord to be rid of it. And the Lord says, my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. And Paul eventually comes through understanding that the purpose of this all was to keep him from becoming conceited or puffed up with pride given the magnitude of the surpassing greatness of the revelations. He talks about being caught up to the third heaven and other things. And just imagine the revelation of God that Paul had. Imagine being inspired by the Holy Spirit as you write the book of Romans and the great depths of learning and theology that he had. And so the temptation is for Paul to become self-obsessed thinking, well, I'm this great spiritual, godly man. And so to prevent that sin of pride, the Lord permits one of the devil's angels to harass Paul just to remind him that no matter how great his ministry is, you're still just a sinner, saved by grace. The German reformer, Martin Luther, so that there are three things that make a minister. So if you wanna be a minister, according to Martin Luther, you have to have these three things. Aratio, Meditatio, and Tintatio. That is prayer, meditation, and temptation. And if you've ever read anything about Luther's life, you know about his very personal battles with what he believed was the devil. I can't get into all that now, but it is really fascinating. Luther almost believed, I think, that the devil personally himself was out to get him. And that's something he dealt with for his whole life. And I think those experiences led him to rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ even more and more. I mean, when you realize, you know, sometimes when I'm preaching or I'm doing other things for the Lord, there is just this power that is being exhibited that is otherworldly. And so oftentimes God has to remind, maybe just me, yeah, you're not that special. You still have desires that bring you shame. You still have thoughts that you would not want to be projected on a monitor before everyone else. You're a man. You're my creature. That's a very healthy thing. It doesn't, and I hope no one is listening to me right now thinking, oh, that means it's good to just give in to temptation. No, you completely missed the point if you think that's what I'm saying. My point is that God even uses temptation to make us rely upon him all the more. That is an amazing thing. And so then looking at these biblical texts, we could understand why some interpreters struggle with Jesus telling us to pray lead us on its temptation because if in some sense, biblically, temptation is used by God for our good, why is Jesus telling us to pray this way? And so that's why I've said in order to make sense of Christ's words, we have to see them as a whole. For it is not merely have us pray, lead us not into temptation, but also deliver us from evil. The idea is not that we expect God to never allow struggling, to never allow suffering or adversity or temptations or trials into our lives, but specifically that we would be kept from sin. Because just because you're tempted by something in some sense does not mean you're sinning. Jesus was tempted by the devil personally, Jesus never sinned. And so there's a clear, we can understand then what it is that we're actually praying for. We are praying that even when temptation comes, if we experience a testing like what Job experienced or what Paul experienced, that God would equip us to be delivered from that situation and to overcome it without falling into sin. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul is talking about the history of Israel and their wickedness and the subsequent judgments of God. And he is saying that these things were written for our present day instruction that we had learned from them. And he says, "Therefore, let anyone thinks, who thinks that he stands, take heed, least, he fall. No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation notice, we're not being told that temptations won't ever come. What the word of God says is that, but with the temptation, he God will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it." This is, in my opinion, the clearest exposition of what it is that we're really praying for in verse 13, that we would never ever ever be put into a situation where our only option was to sin. And the apostles promise, which in some respect is an answer to the prayer, is that no Christian is ever going to be put to some predicament where it is beyond their strength or ability to resist temptation. Now, that is both convicting and encouraging at the same time. It is convicting because it tells us, if God is never going to allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to resist, it tells us that every single time that we've sinned, it's because that's what we wanted to do. There's no excuse for our sin. This is something about sin that is biblical, but we need to hear it. Every sin that has ever been committed in the history of sin was done so at the desire of the one sinning. You know, so often we try to make excuses. We try to rationalize our sin and we seek to blame our circumstances. By the way, when you blame your circumstances, you're just blaming God's providence. And so we try to blame other people, right, or we blame even the devil himself. But everyone sins when they are led astray by their own desires, what James tells us. Thomas Manton has said, "We may commit sin without Satan, but Satan cannot betray us to sin without ourselves. He cannot have his desire upon us without us." This has application to our personal lives, but I think it has application to just the way we view society, the way we view civilization. You know, when it comes to the justice system, there are many on the, if I can use the phrase social left to have a conception of nurture over nature, meaning that the actions of one's life are overwhelmingly dependent upon the circumstances of his upbringing. And therefore, when we look at crime rates and we wonder why, well, these particular communities or this group of people, the crime rate is so much higher, people will, well, it's the system. Or it's some other thing, and we try to alleviate responsibility, but and neglect the idea, you know, heaven forbid, there is something intrinsic within man that desires lawlessness. But the biblical teaching of man is that, well, obviously, how someone is raised, how someone is nurtured is going to impact the way they live their lives. That doesn't mean that we are not morally responsible for our own actions, both in the sight of God and in the sight of the justice system. And how do we, what do we do with that? Well, if you really want to see change in your community, if you really want to see positive change, you have to strike at what the real issue is. You can't sit there and say, well, it's the system, man, or it's this thing, or it's, you know, the way that certain areas were zoned, or, you know, no, we cannot blame other circumstances. We have to understand that men sin when they want to. And so if we want to deal with sin, if we want to deal with lawlessness, we have to go to the root of the problem, which is sin, and if that is never dealt with, if you don't march forth with the banner of Christ's kingdom, waving alongside you, saying the fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom, preaching the powerful and saving gospel of repentance, you will never, ever, ever see societal change. At least not change that has a lasting effect. The other thing we learned from the promise that we will never be tempted beyond our ability is to hope. You know, we have such great encouragement to recognize that in every, in any and every situation, there is always going to be a way for us to please God. Now, if you are a person who, in your heart, you want to please God, that should give you so much joy. There's never a time when you don't have to. There's never a time when sin is just the thing that you've got to do, there's no other choice, there's another option. It's a tremendously wonderful thought to hold on to. And so you could be in the lion's den, right? You could be exiled in Babylon. You could be, you know, exiled in Egypt, right, as Joseph. You could live in a godless, pagan, wicked society that loves death, that loves decay, that has trampled under foot any semblance of morality and the bright heritage of her past. And you can still please God. You know, as Christians, when we look at the world that we live in, we look at certain social issues, it is so easy to get discouraged. And to just think, oh, it's all going to hell in a hand basket, you know, just this morning. I was speaking to an elderly gentleman and that's what he said to me, oh, you know, Logan, I think it's all, it's going to be ending soon, you know? And I know other guys, that's how they live their lives. They just see how bad things are getting and it's all, you know, I just, I can't wait for the rapture, I can't wait for all that just be done. But aside from the eschatological discussions, the hope that we should have is that even if God calls us to live in a time that is very dark, right, what was said to Esther, perhaps you were raised up for such a time as this. Well, we've been raised up for such a time as this. If God wanted you to be your age in 1990, that's what he would have done. But God wanted every single person in this room to be who, what, where we are right now. This is, you know, we have to reckon with that. We have to be willing to accept that. But we should be encouraged to know that we don't have to, you know, we may go to heaven alone but we don't have to go to hell with the herd. We can still please and honor God in our lives. Even in the midst of just this utter wickedness and depravity, just, I mean, yesterday, when we were out doing, with heritage restored, some of our abolition outreach and things like that, the amount of people that just come up to us and wanna yell at us about how much they love murdering babies. It would be easy to, you know, just fire back with something nasty or just insult, right? It would be so easy to just throw your hands in the air but even in a situation like that, no, we can still please God. We can still respond and interact with people in a way that is pleasing to him. So you can influence society. And when you say, how do I do that? Well, I tell people, what is your sphere of influence? Is it your kids, is it your grandkids, co-workers, wherever it is that you are in life, God has placed you there. You know, you may not be a minister preaching a sermon but you can still share the basic truths of God's word. You can just live a life that demonstrates, wow, this is a loving, this is a caring person. You can always please God. Now, when you look at politics, there are, you know, some who would have you believe that the only choice that we ever have is to just compromise and to just forsake our values and go with the lesser of two evils spurred the side of two evils, choose neither. We never have to compromise. I don't care how many people on X want to write to me and tell me I'm a purity spiraling pietist. I don't have to compromise. Now, how you vote this election, that is between you and the Lord. I don't give them anyone's conscience. But to sit there and act like it's necessary that we go against our values and our beliefs and support a candidate who is opposed to the abolition of abortion, no, I don't have to. I don't have to compromise. God is never going to put me in a situation where that's my only option. Even when the judgment of God comes upon a land, even in that day and in that hour, sin will never be a necessity. We will still have a way to please God in famine, in persecution, whatever may come your way. Dear Christians, hold fast, hold steadfast to the proposition that Jesus Christ is King and we serve Him. So then learn, let us learn to pray for these things that God would keep us from temptation and deliver us from evil. If Jesus is teaching us to pray to God for it, we should learn very clearly that this is something that we cannot attain on our own strength. We are dependent creatures. Jesus said, blessed are the meek. We depend upon our Creator to preserve us from sin. You know, Jesus once said to Peter, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. We have a willing spirit, but a weak flesh. Paul once said, I myself serve the law of God in my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. And so a good general is not going to set out his weakest unit to the front of the battle. Let us be good generals. Let us recognize that in the fight against sin, our flesh is the weakest unit. You know, don't try to fight off anger or pride or lust or whatever it is with the flesh. It's not gonna work. We're told to flee from such things as sexual immorality. We must fight this battle with our strongest soldier, our strongest unit, which is our spirit, as well as the Holy Spirit who lives inside of us. For he is that same spirit which raised Christ from the dead. And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit, who dwells in you. Now, in order for the accomplishment of this, we are taught by Christ to pray. It is by praying in the spirit that our mortal bodies will be given life to resist temptation. And thus we will see God deliver us from evil. Now the thing gives us hope is to recognize that Christ himself prays for us. He says to the Father in John 17, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth." Imagine what victory everyone in this room should expect over their sin when we remember we're not the only ones praying for that victory, but Christ himself is as he intercedes for us. It's an amazing thing. Now a few cautions to make, that we have in a short victory does not condone apathy. You know, a wild misconception about when we talk about the fact that believers don't lose their salvation or eternal security or perseverance of the saints, the criticism that we hear is that, oh, well, you're condoning licentiousness because we preach that, this big hopeful message about how God is ultimately going to sustain us throughout our whole lives. And then people say, well, you're just giving people excuses to, you know, who think that they no longer have to actually be concerned with fighting sin. Because no matter what you do, you're gonna win in the end, right? But let us remember something. We are told by Jesus to pray to be kept from temptation and delivered from evil. Now does it not follow that those who make this prayer would genuinely not want to sin? Right, like if you're actually praying to God tonight, God keep me from sin, I would hope that that means you actually want that prayer answered. You know, dear Lord, keep me from sin, but not this one, I like this one. And that's so often what happens, so often what happens. And so if we are believers who genuinely don't want to sin when we're praying that God would keep us from sin, how could anyone accuse us of apathy? Now going right along with this, another caution should be made, and that is do not act against your own prayers. Do not say something to God with your mouth and then do another thing with your body. I've talked about this many times, I think, but do not lie to God. Praying is talking to God. And if we pray for things that we do not actually mean or that we do not truly intend to follow through with, we lie to God. You know, some people are so mixed up that they think they can cover up their bases by doing a few spiritual things that in their day-to-day living, I don't need to be worried, I did the confession, you know, or whatever it is. And such was the sin of the Jews in ancient times who neglected basic justice and morality but thought that they were okay because of their religious duties. Isaiah chapter one, we hear the word of the Lord, your rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fad of well-fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings, incense as an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations, I cannot endure iniquity in solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen, your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless and plead the widow's cause. How many people? Pray God bless America, God bless the USA. Oh, and it's like your hands are full of blood, America. Correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless and the widow's cause. I've told people before, if you have one of those Bible programs that you can like type certain words and it will show you a bunch of Bible verses. Type up, I want you to look up the words orphan and widow. And I want you to just see the amount of verses in the Old Testament that come up where God is telling people to look after the orphan and the widow, and who is that? Well, the orphan and the widow are the two most vulnerable people in society. In the Old Testament culture, obviously, it was very important for a woman to be married because you marrying a valuable husband was how you were going to make sure you'd be in take care of. And obviously an orphan, a child without their parents, right? Well, the two most vulnerable people in society, we see that in God's word, he's very concerned about the fatherless, about the most vulnerable people. And do you not think God is equally as concerned about the most vulnerable people in our society, which is the children in the womb? Take heed of the testimony of the prophet Micah, who says, with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10 thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. The point of me reading those two passages is not lost on you. Obviously God wants us to observe religious things. He wants us to gather on the Lord's day. He wants us to pray, to sing Psalms and hymns, to have preached, to observe the ordinances, when we do observe the ordinances. But those are not the only things. Jesus talked about weightier and lesser matters of the law and he said about the Pharisees. Yeah, you do all the tithing and you do all these things, but you don't look after those who are in need. You don't actually address injustice. And Jesus says, these things you should have done also while not neglecting the others. So we want to do our religious things. We want to pray and worship. But that should be connected to a life and to a heart that truly seeks to honor God. The covenant sign of Abraham was circumcision of the flesh. And Moses said, not just to circumcise your flesh, but to circumcise the foreskin of your hearts. And Colossians chapter two says that even though in the New Testament it's not obviously required for circumcision, we are all Christians are circumcised, but it's a circumcision made without hands. It's a circumcision of a heart. It's a God cutting off the impurities and the lawlessness and the wickedness and cleansing us. And so take from this message tonight, pray that God not just that he would forgive you of your sins, but that he would cleanse your heart, that he would empower you by his grace to live a life that is honorable and pleasing to him. Would you join me now in a word of prayer? Dear gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your truth. We pray that your name was revered. You were honored and you were glorified in our worship tonight. We pray that these truths would transform the way all of us walk out of this building tonight. It's in Christ's name we pray.